Monday, February 13, 2012

Westminster Dog Show Stops "Shelter" Ads

I was asked to comment on this article. The link is below . Your thoughts are MOST welcome !!!
My thanks to Amy for her blog post. She did a good job explaining the situation. I do not think the AKC does a good job at all. I have a lot of resentment for their lack of support behind puppy mill bills. Those barbaric puppy mills are making $$$ for the AKC . Those overbred and abused dogs get their "papers" when they send in their membership fee, even though they are are likely to be sickly and probably live a much shorter life. 
I write more about the AKC  another time.

PHILLY DAWG: “HAPPY DOGS” REPLACE SAD-EYED POUND PUPPIES AT WESTMINSTER DOG SHOW


From The Philadelphia Inquirer, Amy Worden’s blog, Philly Dawg
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2012
The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show has dumped its lead sponsor Pedigree after 24 years.The reason? The American Kennel Club didn’t like those tear-jerker commercials of sad-eyed shelter dogs peering out from behind lonely cage bars.
So this year’s Westminster show, which starts tomorrow at Madison Square Garden in New York, will be sponsored by Nestle Purina Petcare whose messages will feature “happy dogs.” “The feedback we got from our primary audience was that they were seeing commercials that made them want to turn the channel,” said Westminster spokesman and longtime TV host David Frei.
The Pedigree commercials, seen by 3.4 million dog show viewers, helped raise some $7 million for the Pedigree Foundation , which supports shelters across the country (click on link for happy adoption stories).
Some 25 percent of shelter dogs are purebred, some percentage of those enter with AKC registration papers. We know that all too well in Pennsylvania where dogs from cruelty seizures, among them kennels owned by recognized AKC breeders, flow – and sometimes flood – into shelters every year.
Frei said the show didn’t like the idea that Pedigree was trying “shame” viewers.
http://atailtotell.com/newwebsite/2012/02/13/philly-dawg-happy-dogs-replace-sad-eyed-pound-puppies-at-westminster-dog-show/


I read about this earlier this week.  At first I thought, like many will, ' That's too damn bad if they don't like to see those commercials !" 
But, after thinking about it, I realized that there are many ways to deliver that message and they really should find a way to share the story of the homeless pet population without using the same sad commercials. Some imagination would have done a lot more good than losing the contract to someone who will not really try to do more than sell their product. We can not force people to learn or to care. We can only provide them information is a way to make it easy to understand and "interesting", especially to the "target audience".  This is one example when being stubborn about the method, not the message, was  a bad move. I am sorry it worked out this way. People need to hear the truth. We need to figure out how to tell them without having them turn off their TV sets. We need to be smarter ! 

1 comment:

  1. I was asked about this show by a few people so here is a link they provide that gives you the schedule, TV and Live, as well as all kinds of facts and stats. http://www.westminsterkennelclub.org/2012/show/info.html

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